Democrats Take Aim at Trump’s Tariffs Ahead of Midterms

Top Democratic leaders marked the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2 by releasing a report on their economic impact and calling them a central issue heading into November’s midterm elections.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a statement on April 2, framed the tariffs as the GOP’s primary vulnerability ahead of November’s elections.

“After running on an empty promise to lower costs, House Republicans’ support of Trump’s reckless tariffs has turned their central 2024 promise into their biggest 2026 liability,” committee spokesperson Viet Shelton said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also argued the tariffs had driven up costs for American families and small businesses since Trump announced sweeping import taxes in 2025.

“Liberation Day has been a disaster,” Jeffries said on a Democratic National Committee press call on April 2, which also featured Kim.

“Donald Trump’s policies have been a disaster, and Republicans have failed the American people—particularly on the economy.”

Schumer separately released a report on April 2 alongside several Senate Democratic colleagues that includes the claimed effects of tariffs on consumers, manufacturers, and small businesses. The report claims that American families have paid more than $1,700 in higher costs since the tariffs took effect.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that Trump’s tariffs added about $1,000 in new taxes per household in 2025, compared with the report’s higher figure.

“Trump has doubled and tripled down on his illegal and devastating trade war despite its primary achievement being higher costs for the American people,” Schumer said. “Trump instituted these tariffs with no Congressional oversight, no transparency, and no endgame. The result is only pain for consumers and businesses.”

The White House, in an email to The Epoch Times, responded to Schumer and Jeffries’s comments.

“Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries spent decades talking about how lopsided trade deals were fueling runaway trade deficits and hollowing out American industries, jobs, and communities,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in the email.

“Now these same Democrats are seething about the fact that, in the one year since Liberation Day, President Trump has actually done something about this crisis: signing over 20 new trade deals, securing trillions in manufacturing investments, and shrinking our goods trade deficits.”

The Republican National Committee (RNC) also pushed back, saying Trump’s trade agenda is working. The RNC pointed to figures showing that the trade deficit narrowed from $904 billion in 2024 to $901 billion in 2025, that U.S. exports rose by 6.2 percent to $3.43 trillion over the past year, and that the economy grew by 2.1 percent in 2025, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

“While Democrats oppose bringing jobs back home, President Trump is fighting for American workers,” RNC national press secretary Kiersten Pels said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times. “His trade agenda is lowering costs, raising wages, and driving trillions in new investment back into American manufacturing and energy. The trade deficit is shrinking, exports are rising, and tariff revenue is strengthening our fiscal position.”

Kim used the anniversary to highlight the Tariff Refund Act of 2026, legislation he co-sponsored in February that would require the government to refund tariffs collected under the policy the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional earlier this year.

“That’s why myself and a number of my colleagues in the Senate have pushed forward on the Tariff Refund Act, to be able to push and ensure that small businesses are at the front of the line, that the American families are the ones that are in mind, not the big corporations,” Kim said on the call on April 2.

In February, the Supreme Court struck down a major portion of Trump’s tariff program. The White House and the president have signaled after that ruling that they plan to continue pursuing new trade penalties against foreign partners.

In a March 15 post on Truth Social, Trump criticized the court’s decision invalidating tariffs imposed under emergency powers but said the ruling left open other avenues for imposing duties.

“The Court knew where I stood, how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country, and instead decided to, potentially, give away Trillions of Dollars to Countries and Companies who have been taking advantage of the United States for decades,” Trump wrote at the time.

Also speaking on the Democratic National Committee call, Doug Scheffel, who owns ETM Manufacturing in Littleton, Massachusetts, described a 20 percent revenue drop in 2025 in the company, attributing it largely to tariff-driven uncertainty among his customers.

“When costs go up because of tariffs, and margins were already thin, you really don’t have a choice, and we can’t absorb it,” Scheffel said.

“You raise prices, and when your customers are small companies working with tight engineering and investment budgets, that means they buy less, or they don’t buy at all, and it’s a chain reaction.”

He said that the company was seeing “some positive signs” in the first quarter of this year, as revenue has been up slightly, but “the nature of the work has changed.”

“The projects that are coming in are smaller,” he said. “Customers are being cautious, with every dollar, because they don’t know what’s coming next and how to predict what’s going to happen.”